by Stefania Fumo
ROME, July 9 (Xinhua) -- Last year saw a boom in arrests for crimes against the environment, but also an increase in profits made by the so-called "ecomafias" that run the waste and animal trafficking rackets in Italy, Legambiente environmentalist group told lawmakers in Rome on Monday.
Police in 2017 executed 538 arrest warrants, up 139.5 percent compared with 2016, and launched 614 criminal proceedings (against 265 in the previous year), according to the 2018 Legambiente report that was presented to the Lower House. Offenses included pollution, environmental disaster, failure to carry out environmental clean-ups, and waste trafficking.
Also last year, the "ecomafias" had turnover of 14.1 billion euros, up 9.4 percent over 2016, according to Legambiente.
"Never before in our country have we seen this many arrests for crimes against the environment," the report said.
The trash and waste sector has the highest percentage of criminal infiltration, at 24 percent, according to Legambiente. In 2017, there were 76 waste trafficking investigations (up from 32 in 2016), 177 arrests, and 4.4 million tonnes of waste were seized, compared with 556,000 tonnes the previous year.
The rise in prosecutions follows the introduction in 2015 of an environmental crime law introduced by the center-left Democratic Party, which stiffened punishments and lengthened the number of prosecutable offenses.
"The numbers contained in this new edition of the Ecomafia Report show the gigantic steps forward made thanks to the new law, which introduced crimes against the environment into the penal code," Legambiente President Stefano Ciafani said in a statement.
The legislation was introduced after the European Union slapped multi-million-euro fines on Italy for failing to clean up the so-called "Land of Fires" around the southern city of Naples, where the powerful Camorra mafia has deeply infiltrated the rubbish collection industry and where criminal organisations have been dumping toxic waste for decades.
These illegal dumps and the uncontrolled burning of waste and other toxic materials in the Land of Fires have been blamed for unusually high levels of cancer and other diseases linked to pollution, according to a Superior Institutes of Health (ISS) study.
